Bloom
by Breezy Autumn Winds
Summary: Her daughter is clearly in love with someone and Elmyra wants to know who.


AN:

I'll try to fix mistakes as I spy them. That is to say probably never lol

Also I'm back to using Aerith because no matter how many times Yoshinori Kitase and Tetsuya Nomura call me personally and tell me it's not Aer **is** but Aer **ith** it just doesn't feel right. So yeah, old habits die hard. Plus, Aeris is actually a very pretty name while Aerith (EVEN THOUGH IT SOUNDS LIKE EARTH) just sounds unpleasant. So yeah.

Anywhere. Here is my new story. I hope you enjoy even a little.

* * *

 ** _Bloom_**

Rain was drumming its thin, icy fingers against the window pane. Cold was starting to settle in – the warm weather having bowed out at last. Jackets and shirts had made their way out of closets and bureau drawers, and the rain was starting to leave thin spiderwebs of ice across the glass. They wouldn't stay for long. After all, this was Midgar and not the Northern Continent - cold here was summer weather compared to further north. The ice and frost always vanished moments later, even faster if one was close enough, and a cloud of breath managed to spread enough warmth to make them disappear.

Elmyra kept watching them form and then dissipate. Her seat - and old hand-me-down - sat by the window was low, the cushion not having much left to it after years of bearing impressions from those who had perched there before. It wasn't very comfortable, but she didn't want to move.

It was already dark, had been dark for hours, which meant it was sneaking past seven o' clock, or perhaps it was nearly eight…and Aeris still hadn't returned home. Her dinner had already been sitting out so long and getting cold that Elmyra had just opted to throw it out. She knew she shouldn't hover her adult daughter so much, that she shouldn't sit here and watch and wait for her. She should move. She should just go about her night and try not to dwell on it. Aeris would come home when she was ready, and not before. No amount of sitting and waiting was going to change that.

It was just another bullet point on the long list of small things that had been piling up. Things she felt paranoid about noticing at first, but then they just continued to compile. Aeris was staying out longer. She was always packing lunches that were way too big for one person. And Elmyra had thought that maybe, just maybe…her daughter had finally found some friends that were going to stick.

It would have been a blessing, that was for certain. Aeris was a beautiful girl. She was bright and she was charismatic in a way that people genuinely liked her. But for some reason, she didn't seem to have a lot of close friends.

It might have been a horrible thing for a mother to recognize about her own daughter, but it was true.

Of course, the group that Aeris was hanging out with more recently – they had been through a lot together. They had been through unimaginable things, saved the world, and survived. And now they were all inseparable. Her daughter was happy, and Elmyra wished she could allow herself to be happy for her daughter. But there was…something else. Something picking at the back of her brain. A little tap tap tap on her skull whenever Aeris drifted off, allowing her mind to wander and slip that dreamy smile onto her face.

It had started, like everything else, small. Perfume on the wrists and neck, who could fault her for that? A nice new scent, one that smelled of cypress and bergamot. A nice, spicy, exciting scent that lingered on the skin making it taste warm, a slow burn in the throat. When she left during the day, always early, she was cheerful as a lark. Nothing could bring her down – she was all smiles and joyful laughter. Beautiful, bright expressions and such sweet, happy little remarks. But then she would leave – and vanish for the entire day. She would return late at night or not at all – Elmyra had caught her often enough sneaking in the following morning.

Hardly abnormal for a girl her age. Elmyra had to keep telling herself that. But Aeris was more than just any young woman. She was Elmyra's dear daughter. The one who had barely survived, but who came out stronger than ever but was now acting as if she lived in a dream. Like her entire life was just turning the pages in a fairy tale.

Elmyra shook her head, as if she could fling the unwanted suspicions out. She hated feeling delusional, she hated feeling suspicious. She wanted to trust her sweet Aeris, she wanted to trust that her daughter would tell her everything. She wanted to banish the doubts and lay everything to rest, allow her daughter to enjoy the fruits of life that she had most certainly earned.

She had to clean something. She had to take her mind off everything. The downstairs was spotless – as that logic for distraction had applied itself earlier in the day. She moved towards the stairs, flicking on the light before making her ascent. Everything smelled like bleach and the apple-scented candle she had left burning upstairs. She made a right at the landing, moving from the top of the stairs towards her daughter's bedroom. Part of her didn't even register that it was Aeris' room until she was inside.

The room itself was a mess. Her daughter had thrown everything around in her attempt to hurry out earlier that day. Elmyra sat down on the side of the bed, sighing heavily and putting a hand over her face. She ground her fingertips into the wet corners of her eyes as if she could push out the headache that had been mounting, creating so much tension just behind, deep-seated in her temples…

Something compelled her to look around. She remembered when she first furnished this room when Aeris was a young girl. She looked over at the desk where some papers were strewn, some uncapped pens were laying about and just waiting to create a mess. Outside of the normal mess of notebook scraps, there was something laying in the very center. A piece of stark white paper that was unremarkable, but smaller and squarer than most.

I'm losing my damn mind, she thought, even as she stood to go look. This was a new level, even for her. A new level of prying parent that she never thought she would reach. Elmyra made it all the way to the desk. Too late to turn around and try to give her daughter some privacy. It was probably nothing. A doodle or a scribble of some kind. Maybe a journal entry, but nothing that…

Elmyra picked it up. It was a good paragraph's worth of handwriting, and it certainly wasn't Aeris's. It didn't have any of the flourishes or demure loops that would have given it away as her daughter's. If anything, it was distinctly male. Boxy and uneven. The words bold and confident, maybe too confident, as they staggered across the page.

The sentences were choppy. At first she could not make head or tail of what was actually written. Somewhere along the way the writer had run out of steam, losing his fervor at the very end with large, frustrated letters. I AM NOT GOOD AT THIS!

Going back to the beginning, Elmyra tried reading once more all the way down. The second time around the words were a lot easier to make out, but that did not make them of any higher quality…

Aeris

THE SUN IS BRIGHT WHEN YOU'RE WITH ME

AND GETS DARKER WHEN I SEE YOU LEAVE

YOU'RE BRIGHT AND HAPPY AS A BEE…

I don't know what you see in me

ArrrrrRRRRR I AM NOT GOOD AT THIS!

She could imagine her daughter giggling at that. It even brought a ghost of a smile to tug at the corners of her own reluctant lips. Only for a second, a fleeting second, before she realized what something like this meant.

This was more than a fleeting fancy. Aeris wasn't just dating. If she was, why would she go through all of the trouble to maintain the secrecy? Why wouldn't she just tell her mother that she was seeing someone, even casually?

It had to be love. The L word that she knew, she knew Aeris wasn't ready to utter. It struck her. She felt it like a sharp pain in her chest, a physical stab to the gut. What was this, that Aeris wasn't her little girl any longer? Was her baby all grown up, and was she ready to strike out and do things on her own, try to start her own little family with some man that Elmyra had never even met?

Of course, in the back of her mind, there came that little knock of the doubt again. She is twenty-three. This is perfectly natural and if we are honest, long overdue…

No, no.

She shouldn't think like that – couldn't start thinking like that. She had to approach this more sensibly. She had to start by finding out who this man was. Clearly, he was a big part of her daughter's life, and she could not let him lurk in the shadows.

She could have asked. Of course, she could ask. But that wasn't how she operated. She had to know, and she would find out before she could confront Aeris. She had to come from a position of strength. Because a mother knows, a mother always knew, and her daughter wasn't going to get away with keeping secrets.

She would find out who he was. Elmyra set the letter back down on the desk in the exact position she had found it. Maybe Aeris wouldn't be back tonight, she couldn't stress over it anymore. She had to think, she had to be smart. She had to have an approach.

She left her daughter's room and only slightly closed the door behind her.

* * *

Aeris coughed – a ragged chest-sound that came with a heavy phlegm-upheaval. She had been complaining of a sore throat that morning, and then it had turned into a head-cold by noon. Now it was full-blown and she was miserable. A rarity of an occurrence to be inflicted upon the planet's last Cetra.

When Elmyra laid a hand against her forehead, her skin was clammy. Her teeth were chattering and the shiver ran all the way up and down her body, making her tremble. She couldn't stand to see her little girl suffer any longer. Elmyra helped her up, wrapping her tightly in one of their thickest blankets before taking her downstairs. She set Aeris down on the couch in front of the fireplace, where the flames were making warm crackles and pops that sent sparks up the chimney. Aeris didn't complain. She just tucked her face into the pillows on the back of the couch and tried to breathe. It sounded like every breath was hard-won, her poor nose and eyes looking almost blue from dark circles. Elmyra hated to pull herself away from her side, but she did it – if for no other reason than she knew soup would help, and she wanted to get some going.

She threw together a warm soup with squash, carrots, and a pinch of curry powder for good luck. She brought the bowl to her daughter with a sweetroll on the side, spread with butter between the flaky layers. Aeris accepted it gratefully, warming her hands on the side of the bowl before she even started to eat. She tore off pieces of the bread and dipped it into the soup, eating a little bit at a time, but the comfort of the fireplace and the warm food was enough to make her eyelids heavy. And she wasn't even half-finished before she finally drifted off in a deep fever sleep. Elmyra took the bowl from her hands before it could tip over and spill, watching it slip from Aeris's cold fingertips. She set it down on the coffee table long enough to tuck the blanket around Aeris's sleeping form again, leaning over to slick back her damp hair and kiss her forehead before picking the bowl back up and taking it to the kitchen so she could start washing it.

Elmyra set the bowl in the sink and started the water running, putting soap on a sponge and going to scour it out. She didn't like a mess. She wanted the kitchen to be tidy, especially with so many germs floating around. Best to go ahead and kill all of those while she was ahead…

She thought about the letter again and tried to shove it to the back of her head. She tried to think of anything else, of what she would make for dinner. If Aeris would be awake by then, what else she could do for this cold…the dishwashing was automatic. It did not take a lot of presence to clean a bowl. Elmyra finished rinsing it out and set it down on the drying rack, turning it upside down so that it would drip dry. She started in on the spoon, and then she heard it. A loud crash coming from upstairs, too loud to be something just falling and hitting the roof outside. It was coming directly from Aeris's room, and it was followed by what sounded like a mumbled string of curses.

It had to be thieves. Or some hooligans off the street who thought it would be fun to climb through Aeris's window and wreak havoc. Now she had to go chase them out and back into the gutters without waking up her feverish daughter. Elmyra grabbed the first thing she could think of to defend herself, grabbing the handle of her broom (she was as formidable wielding a broom as Aeris was her mage staff, she was certain of it). She started upstairs, making her steps light so that no one would hear her coming. She wanted to catch them by surprise, not have these thieves ready to swing at her by the time she opened the door.

She approached the door from the side, taking a deep breath before springing forward. She slammed her palm into the wood, swinging it open, and jumped inside the doorway with the broom clutched in her hands. The red haze of rage dissipated quickly enough for her to realize that it wasn't so much a threat – it was a man (a boy, really. He wasn't tall enough or bearded to claim the status of man.) He was rising from his (rather graceless) position on the floor. Apparently, he had scaled the wall and crawled through Aeris's window, and upon further inspection, it looked like his foot had gotten caught in the curtain and sent him tumbling as well.

A shock of blonde hair. The brightest blue eyes she had ever seen. Elmyra knew who it was – it was Cloud Strife. One of Aeris's companions. She locked him in her fierce gaze as he held his position, half-hovering with his hands out, palms down towards the floor. He froze as he looked at her, and a heavy silence settled between them as the tension mounted. Elmyra thought about the desk, where the letter was long cleared away, but its memory remained. She refused to rip her eyes away from Cloud, the wheels in her head turning, the vein in her temple throbbing and then it just...all clicked into place.

"Oh," was all she offered, shattering the silence with a word.

The spell was broken. The tips of Cloud's ears turned red, a flush that spread its path all the way down to his cheeks as he looked away.

"Hello, Mrs. Gainsborough." He muttered, sounding so much like an embarrassed child.

Elmyra let out a breath. A heavy sigh that rattled past her lips as she lowered the broom. As much as she wanted to turn the bristles towards this little boy (though he saved the Planet he was still very much a boy and nothing anyone said could convince Elmyra Gainsborough otherwise) and chase him out.

"I am surprised at you, Cloud." She said, her words sharp and red-hot flying off her tongue. "Exactly what right do you have to be sneaking into my house, hoping to see my daughter like some horny teenage boy?"

She saw him flinch visibly twice. Both at the words horny and boy. He still wasn't back to making eye contact with her.

"I had no other choice," he said. He kept his tone strong. But his approach was not a threatening one.

"I have a door," she said pointedly. "Two of them, in point of fact."

"That isn't what I meant," he finally brought his gaze back up, blazing and bright and more determined than abashed. "We – I – Aeris and I, knew you would not approve of us."

She was stunned, momentarily, into silence. She opened her mouth to argue but then closed it again. She had to admit, he had her there. She more than certainly blamed him for the many sleepless nights where she had stayed half-awake worried nearly to death about whether or not her daughter was going to come home while she had been away saving the Planet. Elmyra blamed him for the nightmares, for all of the anxiety that arrested her chest at night, made it hard to breathe. The cold showers she had to take just to shake off the dread of a mother never getting to see her child again. Of course, it was all Aeris's decision. She was not being forced or coerced. She chose to go when she had. But if she had not been encouraged by the spikey over there Aeris would have remained safe at home. Loved. Cherished. Not in danger of being skewered by an silver haired madman.

Apparently, she let the silence rest too long. It told Cloud all he needed to know about the weight of his own words. His ears turned pink again and he started to stammer something. "L-Look, you are a good woman…" he began lamely.

"Oh, don't sweet-talk me." She grabbed the broom again, shaking it like she could wield it at him again at any moment, and then he'd be in trouble.

"Look," he kept going because Cloud had always been braver than he was intelligent. "I know you don't like me. Aeris was always trying to convince me that you would. I knew you wouldn't change your mind, though. She loves you and she wants us to get along." He licked his lips. "But it was my idea that we keep it a secret. Because I didn't see it going well if you knew. As I said…you just really aren't very fond of me."

Elmyra harrumphed, visibly, and didn't relax her grip on the broom. He blazed forward anyway.

"I love Aeris," he said it, boldly and like if he held it in any longer it was going to come spewing out on its own. But as soon as it fell from his lips, he pulled back, nerves taking over again. "I love her, and I've never felt anything like this before. I wish I could explain it, but she makes me…a better person, just by being around her. I see all the things in her she doesn't see, the things I think you see in her too. How friendly she is, how beautiful and smart." He was getting bolder again, more confident when he was not immediately shot down. "I know it's easy to think I'm just a kid, just a kid with some amazing luck to do the things we did, who will break her heart and leave it in a dumpster somewhere. But I'm not like that. And I want to get to know you better. Because I like to think, at least, that I'm important to Aeris. And I want to get to know the most important person in her life." He drew a deep breath. "I hope that we can come to like each other better, that we can find some common ground. If not for either of our sakes, then for hers."

She slackened her grip on the broom handle. She folded her arms across her chest, cocking an eyebrow and testing the waters. "And what if I flat-out forbid you from seeing her?"

He didn't break a sweat. He didn't miss a beat. "I would tell you that it doesn't matter," he said without a tremor in his voice. "Because as long as Aeris will have me I will be here." He paused, then, thinking maybe for a second he pushed his luck. "Ma'am."

"I see," she let out a fast breath. "So even if I ordered you to do so, you would'nt leave Aeris alone?"

He shook his head. "No, I would not."

She let the moment linger, uncrossing her arms slowly and eyeing him with a shrewd gaze. "You should do that more often." She said, still clipped.

He blinked once, slowly, as if that was taking a moment to process. "Do…what more often?" He asked, puzzlement written on his face. His eyes were so wide and wild he looked like a startled Chocobo. Elmyra pursed her lips and generously refrained from rolling her own eyes.

"Acting like a man outside of the battlefield," she said. "And not some scared little boy who is afraid of a poor old woman." She gave him another long up-and-down look, evaluating him for what felt like the first time all over again. Of course, his arms (she had to admit begrudgingly) were strong. No doubt from lifting that ridiculous sword all of the time. He could stand to have a little more fat around the middle. She would see to that part herself if she had to. "Come on then. I'll fix you something to eat."

She swept her way downstairs, expecting Cloud to follow. He did, going almost immediately to the couch where Aeris was dozing and suctioning himself to the side as if his presence alone was healing. Elmyra vanished into the kitchen to make dinner, glancing every now and then over her shoulder to check on the two love-birds (at the very least, to make sure that no small part of this was a ploy to let them canoodle behind her back in the more literal sense).

As strong as he was, the hand he placed against her forehead was gentle, measuring out her fever. It was so clear that he loved her, and the visibility of that alone was enough to warm Elmyra's heart slightly towards him. Her mild approval turned into something softer, a much more motherly light when Aeris opened up her swollen green eyes; puffy with sickness, she still smiled when she saw Cloud. She placed a warm, feverish hand against his cool cheek and brought him down a little closer. He shifted his weight for a better lean and got close. He was clearly a risk-taker, willing to face down the germs.

"Hey." Aeris said simply as if no other words were needed, and even if they had been her throat was so dry and croaking that it probably would have been a pain to get them out.

Cloud smiled down at her as he leaned over, brushing his lips over her flushed cheeks causing Aeris to positively beam.

Elmyra sighed again, but it was good-natured as she turned her eyes away from the lovebirds. She was willing to give them a little privacy. Just a little, though.

She stirred the soup, a little absentmindedly. She thought about Cloud and wondered, were her grandchildren going to have the same absurdly spiked blonde hair or if they were going to have a propensity for finding life endangering trouble?

She certainly hoped not on both accounts.


End file.
